Lunar Eclipse

It is late August, in the dark early morning.
A resplendent full moon is in the southwestern sky,
and my three cats have congregated around my feet,
perhaps wondering why I am out here
in the grass with them.

A shadow, like a fingertip touching
a nightlight, is touching the top
of that cold planet of a planet
which sometimes seems to hang
too proudly, too defiantly, too brightly

in the dark sky. At times like these,
she powders her face with the stars,
seeming to sweep them from the sky
with her harsh brush of light, which also
drops her silvery stellar powder on grass and trees.

She is to be humbled, this morning.
Looking later, she is bitten, like a Danish
wedding cookie: some mouth has taken
a bite out of the top of her. There is a trace
of red: the Earth wears lipstick.

And now she is gone. I feed my confused
cats early, this morning, under the strange and
abject darkness of a full moon, a moon which
has been swallowed by a darkness which
I stand upon and help, by being solid, to create.

The stars around her are released, for now.
She will return, that luminous face, but I
feel my own shadows encroaching. I submit,
finally, to my bed, willing my own stars to escape,
wondering if I too will be able to reappear.

~
tm/ 8-28-07